Promising Forever
by TheSummerNightingale
Summary: "They'd been this close before - closer, even - but this time there were no studies to focus on, no Dementors, no immediate dangers and yet the biggest danger of all - and Harry's free hand inched up to Hermione's face and brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear." After Ron left them and their futile mission, something inexplicably intimate passed between Harry and Hermione.


**Written for Care of Magical Creatures, Assignment 9: **_Write about someone that has their own 'determined space' that's theirs and theirs alone, and someone else breaches that space._

* * *

_"To fetch one when one goes astray,_

_to lift one if one totters down,_

_to strengthen whilst one stands."_

_\- Christina Rossetti_

* * *

The only time any of them could embrace the silence in the drafty tent with their meager meals and vague outlines of a plan was when night fell. Two of them tucked themselves into bed while the other propped a chair up just outside the tent to keep watch for a few hours, and when _silence_ enveloped the tent like the countless spells Hermione'd put up, none of them pushed it away.

Hermione let it flutter over her heart. She closed her eyes and smelled the woodiness of the forest, and she pretended that she was just camping with her parents like she had so long ago. There was the crackling of the fire, the soft whistle of her father's nose as he slept. In the silence, she felt safe and warm, even if just for a moment.

Ron clutched the silence in his fist and wrung it out. He, out of all of them, hated silence the most. It reminded him of the fatality of their mission, the green light that awaited them at the end of it all… And yet, he was also the one who loved it the most, because if he listened hard enough, he could hear his mother's voice calling him down for dinner, he could hear the erratic bangs coming from the twins' rooms, he could hear Ginny singing in her room below his, he could hear the ghoul in the attic thumping against the walls…

But it was Harry who the silence was for, and his best friends were instinctively, acutely aware of that.

It didn't matter if either Ron or Hermione had a sudden thought to share before any of them drifted off; the silence of night was for Harry. It was not to be breached by sound that the three of them could collectively hear.

Harry welcomed the silence as if it was release from his burdens. He drank in the quiet and savored the taste of freedom, because there were no demands from the silence, no underlying tones that questioned his abilities. He lay in the darkness (Hermione and Ron rarely let him keep watch first) and did his best not to think about Voldemort, about impending doom, about the locket that was heavy against his chest.

The silence was Harry's escape. To breach it would be to crack the fragile shell of protection over Harry's mind. His mother's love would save his life, but the silence saved his sanity in those days in the tent.

The silence was his, and only once was it ever breached.

* * *

It'd been three nights after Ron'd left them and the locket behind - the last night they stayed in the same forest in hopes Ron would appear again and calm the misery both Harry and Hermione felt.

Hermione had cried herself to sleep both of the nights before, and as much as she tried to muffle her sobs into the blanket or clean her face up by morning, Harry still heard the desperation in her labored breaths. Her eyes were still red and puffy when she woke up, and she was, for the most part, quiet.

Now it was their last night waiting for Ron to come back. It was decided that they'd leave the next morning.

"We can't stay in the same place for too long," Harry had reluctantly reminded her that evening. "We have to leave." The fact that he'd had to be the logical one of the group - of the _pair_ \- made the knife Ron's departure had plunged into him twist deeper.

Hermione'd still refused to let Harry take the first watch ("I know you're going to let me sleep more than 3 hours in between, Harry.") and she now sat in the chair by the tent flap, huddled under the blankets they'd charmed to keep warm.

Harry watched the shadow of her thin body from his bed for a moment before turning and bringing his own blankets up to his chin. Silence swirled around the room. Hermione's sniffles quieted, and the breeze outside calmed.

Evening had been Ron's time to degenerate and relax. Morning was Hermione's. Night was Harry's, and despite everything that had happened with Ron, Harry found himself drifting off and letting his thoughts escape him as silence settled over the room like a blanket of snow.

And he could finally hear himself think; Hermione was wearing the locket tonight. He felt guilty for being relieved that she was carrying their burden, but the guilt was forgotten as the silence drugged him (_this_ was why silence was Harry's - because being awake and being asleep both constituted nightmares whereas Hermione and Ron still had the luxury of dreaming).

The boy who lived lost himself in the quiet and lay there without twitching even a finger. He was contented to stay in the hazy world of not-quite-sleeping-yet. It was, after all, his only form of release.

"Harry?" Hermione's voice was no louder than a breath of air, but it was close enough for him to hear it.

The earmuffs that silence had given him slipped off. Harry's eyes opened to find a blurred mass of Hermione's face beside his bed.

For a moment, he simply lay on his side until Hermione stood and started towards her seat by the door again. "Never mind," he heard her murmur. "Sorry I woke you up."

"I wasn't asleep," said Harry, but he flopped onto his back again and closed his eyes.

Ten minutes later, Hermione whispered into the darkness, cutting into Harry's silence like she and Ron had never had before. "I'd never thought that this would be what I was doing when I was nineteen." Perhaps she thought he was asleep, but Harry wasn't. He was wide awake now, and he'd quietly jammed on his glasses and was staring at the top of the tent, waiting for Hermione to continue.

"I thought - well, I thought I'd be finishing my last year at Hogwarts. But even if I wasn't here, I wouldn't be able to get into Hogwarts anymore, I'd have to get a background check…"

She sounded like she was talking to herself, and Harry wondered if she did this every night, and he and Ron had just never heard.

Hermione didn't say anything more for a couple minutes. Then she let out in one long breath, "I'm glad you're in Australia, Mum, Dad, because it's a relief to know that you're safe. I can't imagine what Ron's going through, how horrible it must be to wonder if his family's been killed, and I promise I'll find you someday and fix your memories, if you want me to." Her voice had gone up very high at the end.

A tiny part of Harry resented the fact she'd broken the almost holy silence that he _needed_ to stay sane and agile in his mind. Another felt enormously guilty at her words: "...how horrible it must be to wonder if his family's been killed". He'd thrown that very statement back into Ron's face three nights ago, hadn't he?

Hermione's voice dropped, and Harry had to strain to hear it. She must have been practically mouthing the words. "I hope Ron made it to the Burrow."

Harry knew she'd never really thought that Ron was going to come back, but hearing her whisper the words to herself made himself shift uncomfortably in the bed. Hermione'd never been one to be vulnerable about anything completely personal, Harry realized. She fretted and nearly drowned herself over her studies, and she was always touchy during exams week, but she'd never been exactly outright or careless when it came to her deepest fears.

Harry found himself slipping out from under his covers and standing. Hermione didn't hear him until he was two steps behind her; she spun around and put her hand to her mouth before whispering, "You scared me. Aren't you - Weren't you asleep?"

He nodded to avoid embarrassing her. "Sorry. Yeah. Just woke up."

"Well," she said after a moment, "there's still more than two hours until your shift. Get some rest, Harry."

"Can't sleep." He took a seat on the ground beside her chair.

"Well, rest. Lie down. You need it." What she really meant - and somehow Harry understood that she meant this, that she understood - was that he needed to take his daily dose of silence and letting go. But it was too late for that, and maybe she realized this because she added with a bit of embarrassment, "Sorry if I woke you. I don't usually - you know."

He nodded.

They sat there in the darkness, both staring out at the snow through the tent flap and listening to each other breathe.

"Hermione," Harry said quietly. "Take off the locket."

"Take off - no, Harry, you've already had your turn-"

"No. I meant, take it off. We can afford to keep it off of us for one night."

Hermione's brown eyes were visibly wide as her mouth opened. "But we shouldn't, we can't trust it to be alone-"

"Merlin, just do it, Hermione, or I'll do it for you," Harry said a bit crossly. When she still stared at him without moving her hands to the chain, Harry huffed impatiently and reached over. He grabbed the chain on both sides of her collarbone and lifted it over her head.

Her curly hair tickled his arms and he felt her warm breath on his forearm as he pulled his arms away and set the locket on the ground beside him. "There," he said, leaning against the side of the chair. "Better?"

"No! I mean, yes, but are you certain?" she asked anxiously. Her fingers were outstretched as if she was considering snatching it up and putting it on again.

"It's right next to me, Hermione. It's not going anywhere. We can afford to keep it off for one night."

Hermione looked torn for a moment, until she warily leaned back into her seat. "I… well, I suppose so."

She was much less stubborn now that she'd had a taste of freedom from the locket.

Silence once more enveloped the tent, but it was a different one from Harry's usual. Hermione's whisper had broken their nightly routine, and the silence that was Harry's alone was not the same that settled between them as Harry and Hermione sat next to each other.

Sometime in the silence, Hermione's hand found its way to Harry's hair, and she gently stroked it. The warmth of her touch made a blanket unnecessary even with the snow just a few feet away. Harry closed his eyes and let her run her fingers through his hair.

Suddenly her hand stopped and removed itself from his messy locks. Harry peered up at her and found her staring down at her hands, now clasped in her lap, with a strange look on her face.

"Sorry," she muttered.

"Don't."

Harry turned so that he was facing her, and propped himself up on his knees. His face was almost level with hers, and he could see the pink on her cheeks, which were illuminated by the moonlight.

Looking at her as she avoided his gaze, he suddenly realized that Hermione was all he had. Ron, his best friend, had left them. He and Hermione were all the world had left, all that _Harry_ had left.

He found himself remembering how Ron had turned to Hermione and said, "You said you thought he'd known more too," and then, "Are you coming?" Hermione'd said no, but if Harry thought hard enough, he thought he could remember her hesitation, the way she'd glanced longingly at the tent flap…

But _she'd said no_, and she was still here with him now even though Ron'd been gone for three days. She was all Harry had left, and if she disappeared too, he'd be completely, utterly alone-

"Don't leave me," he said in a sudden, quick breath. "I'm sorry that I dragged both of you into this, I'm sorry, but don't leave like… don't leave."

Hermione glanced up, and Harry was relieved to see the surprise on her face that softened as she reached out for his hand and rubbed her finger over his white knuckles. "I'm not going to leave you," she said gently.

Harry breathed heavily for a moment before nodding. He believed her. "I'm sorry about Ron," he said. His fingers touched the locket on the ground.

Hermione turned her face away and stared outside again. "It was his choice," she said stiffly. "Don't blame yourself."

He nodded once more, settled down to the ground, and the silence resumed. Hermione's hand found its way to Harry's head again, and this time, after a few minutes of relaxing at her touch, Harry reached up and grabbed it. He sat up again so that their faces were inches apart.

They'd been this close before - closer, even - but this time there were no studies to focus on, no Dementors and no Death Eaters, no immediate dangers and yet the biggest danger of all - and Harry's free hand inched up to Hermione's face and brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear.

Her hair was soft to his touch, and he tried to remember if he'd ever touched it before.

"Harry," Hermione breathed softly.

"Thanks for staying with me, Hermione," he said before he could hold his words in. "I… I really appreciate it."

"Harry," Hermione said again, and her eyes glistened with tears as the two instinctively leaned in and put their foreheads together, their breaths intermingling in a warm mass between them. Neither of them mentioned the uncomfortable ghost of an elephant in the room whose name was Ron.

"This probably sounds weird," Harry whispered when she'd blinked her tears away and their foreheads were warm where they touched, "but this sort of reminds me of Cho. You know, in fifth year. Christmas."

"When you two kissed?"

"Yeah."

Hermione laughed, and her breath settled over his lips. "It does sound a bit weird."

"Yeah, never mind." Harry winced. "Probably shouldn't have mentioned that."

"No, probably not." He could feel her smiling. Maybe it was the way that he knew her forehead crinkled when she smiled really big, or maybe it was just because he could feel the smile radiating off of her.

After a moment, she pulled away and stared at her hands in her lap. This time, she looked contented as she said, "Harry?"

"Hm." He covertly touched the spot on his forehead that was still warm.

"I believe in you. I'm not just saying it because it's what everyone else is saying, I'm saying it because I want to say it. I really do believe that you'll defeat You-Know-Who. I know you _can_." She shifted in her seat and turned to him. "That's why I've stayed with you this far, and that's why I'll stay with you as long as you need me or not." She gave him a small smile that he couldn't return because there was a huge lump in his throat.

"Thanks, Hermione," he said. He hoped she could hear the gratitude that he couldn't put into words, and realized that she probably _did_ know how much her words meant to him - she almost always knew. Hermione was, after all, the brightest witch of their year.

They didn't speak for the rest of the night, but Hermione conjured up a chair for Harry to sit in. As they sat side by side after Harry'd summoned some blankets over, their hands inched towards the space between them before firmly closing the gap that was only physically there.

Perhaps it was because neither held the burden of Slytherin's locket and both held the burden of Ron's absence, but from the way they dozed off with their fingers interlocked, they simultaneously felt that they could've been any boy and any girl in the world in that moment.

Harry could simply be a boy who lived, sitting with a girl whom he was eternally grateful for.

* * *

Hermione never broke his - their - customary silence again. But sometimes Harry would stay up (even after Ron came back, but especially before) when she was on watch duty and wait in the darkness for her to murmur soft streams of sometimes incoherent sentences to herself.

The more he caught her at it, the more he realized that talking to herself when she thought no one was listening was the only way Hermione could stand the heaviness of the locket, stand to remain sane in spite of it all. He wondered how he could have ever taken her stability for granted.

She never broke their silence again, but Harry didn't ever forget the one time that she did.

* * *

**I'm not a Harmony shipper, but something about them really pulled me to this moment. :)**


End file.
